


Different

by droosy



Category: Frightfalls, Gravity Falls
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-01
Updated: 2014-09-01
Packaged: 2018-02-15 17:23:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,062
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2237268
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/droosy/pseuds/droosy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dipper, now a werewolf, struggles with his identity and how he describes it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Different

**Author's Note:**

> This fic takes place in the Frightfalls AU, where Dipper is a werewolf and Mabel is a vampire. I'm posting this for my followers on the Frightfalls tumblr, who have had the benefit of some emotional context. It might be hard to get as much out of it if you're coming into this AU blind, but feel free to give it a shot!

It was weird. “Weird” was the best word to describe it. The closest, anyway.

 

It wasn’t wrong. Maybe it should have felt that way, but how could his own skin ever be wrong? His own skin and bones and fur and teeth…

 

It didn’t feel wrong, but it _did_ feel weird.

 

Dipper always woke up in the same bed, but it was like he had a new body every morning. Before he even changed into a clean shirt, he would spend a good ten minutes staring at his reflection in the mirror. It only compounded the strangeness of his situation, but he always had to pull back the drape and look at himself. It was a bad habit of his.

 

Mabel had covered the mirror because she couldn’t stand the sight of her fangs, her eyes, her invisible scar—she was always seeing bloodstains that weren’t there. She was unlike some vampires in that she could see her reflection; she was more human in that respect, but nonetheless she felt all the more monstrous for it. Dipper never really understood why some vampires had reflections and some didn’t—he’d tried to pursue this, but Mabel hated being the subject of his investigations, however indirectly.

 

Dipper looked at himself in the mirror, and he didn’t understand what he saw. There were so many things he didn’t understand.

 

It was, in a word, weird.

 

⁂

 

_The forest was nice. It was a good place to run._

_The ground there wasn’t slippery and smooth like the ground inside the big house. It wasn’t made of fake trees. There were leaves and branches and pine needles with their funny winter smell. There were lots of dark places to hide._

_The forest was full of dark places._

⁂

 

Dipper didn’t have the vocabulary to describe this. He wasn’t sure the words even existed, to be honest. Sometimes he was sure that out there, somewhere, there was a word, a perfect word to describe what he was feeling, a word that he could use so he didn’t have to waste all this time thinking about it. He was sick of using so many words to say essentially nothing, he was sick of only having all the wrong words, and he was sick of looking for a way to talk about it so that people would understand.

 

He was secretly jealous of the wolf. The wolf didn’t think in words. It thought in smells, in noises, in scattered clusters of stimuli—they were raw thoughts, made of pure and visceral sense. It thought in concepts, unfettered by words.

 

Dipper had grown to hate thinking in words, to hate even using them; it was like having to encipher everything into another language, and none of the words had direct translations. It was like—

 

He wanted to convey the concept, the entire reality of it, without a bunch of go-between descriptors to get in the way. Language _itself_ was a barrier.

 

He didn’t want to have to tell anyone what was going on. He wanted them to just _know_.

 

⁂

 

_The forest smelled like rain and snow and dancing feet. It smelled like the others, the big pack girls. It was the pack girls’ house, but it didn’t have a roof. Their house didn’t have a roof or stairs or a bed or anything like that. It didn’t have paper or blankets or a sister with pale hands who made kind noises._

_The pack girls had other houses, for sure. He knew what they looked like on two legs—they were in-between, like him. But they lived there, in the in-between; they were part of it. They were used to being two things at once. So used to it, maybe, that now they were only just one thing._

_He was never only one thing._

  

⁂

 

“Why do you call yourself ‘the wolf’?”

 

She had interrupted his anecdote mid-sentence to ask him this. It wasn’t a sudden question; she hadn’t blurted it out. She’d said it firmly, evenly, like she had practiced asking it.

 

“Why do I…” stammered Dipper. “I don’t know, I’m just telling a story. I’m trying to—I don’t know—” his voice sounded strangely hoarse. “I’m trying to…differentiate, I guess. Anyway—”

 

“Why?” pressed Mabel. “Why would you have to do that? I know it’s you.”

 

“Well, yeah, it’s me,” said Dipper. “But I—there’s certain things that the wolf would do that I wouldn’t, and I want you to know which is which.”

 

“Why?” said Mabel, more desperately this time. “It’s you. It’s always you. Dipper, why…” she croaked. “You’re making it sound like you’re not _you._ ”

 

“Like I’m not _me?_ …” muttered Dipper, scowling. He drummed his nails on the table. He refused to look up, to meet Mabel’s eyes, because he already knew what the expression on her face would be. He was bored of everyone’s pity, and he hated feeling like his pain had hurt _her_ , because that made his pain seem selfish or not allowed. His hands were now tight, trembling fists.

 

“I’ve got news for you, Mabel,” he said at length. “I’m _not_ me. Because I don’t even know who that _is_.”

 

Her voice was so quiet and far away. “I know,” she said softly.

 

“I’m changing all the time, Mabel. It’s like I’m some—this amorphous _blob_ , like I don’t have any real form,” he said, the words falling out fast and heavy. “I only just stopped being a kid, you know, and I never really started being something else. And then I got bitten, and now things are even harder to figure out. Now—” He was crying now, and he couldn’t stop.

 

“I know,” Mabel repeated.

 

“Stop _saying_ that!” Dipper almost shouted.

 

“It’s all I _can_ say!” she said. “All I can _do_ for you is understand.”

 

Dipper wiped his eyes with the back of his wrists. He forced himself to look up at her; her cheeks were wet and her eyes were red.

 

“I _know,_ ” said Mabel. “I know and I understand.”

 

“Thank you,” Dipper whispered.

 

⁂

_She had kind hands, and she gave him lots of food. She had strange eyes and skinny legs. She was different, but she was his sister._

_He was her brother. He had a big tail and feet that didn’t listen. He was different, but he was her brother._

_He was always different, but he was always,_ always _, her brother._

 


End file.
